Sunlight Soap - Lever Brothers

Sunlight is a household brand of cleaning soap originally produced by the British company Lever Brothers in 1884. It was the world's first packaged, branded laundry soap, it was made for washing clothes and general household cleaning. The Lever Brothers was a British company founded in 1885 owned and run by brothers William Hesketh Lever and James Darcy Lever.

It started with a small food business by his father. William Lever and his brother James entered the soap business in 1885 by buying a small soap works in Warrington. The brothers joined forces with a chemist, William Hough Watson, who then became their business partner. Watson invented the new soap, using glycerin and vegetable oils such as palm oil, rather than tallow (animal fat). The resulting soap was a good, free-lathering soap, at first named Honey Soap after the yellowy/orange colour but then it was later changed to "Sunlight Soap". 

In 1971, the company rebranded its Sunlight washing-up liquid in the UK. The new packaging for Sunlight Lemon Liquid had a large picture of a lemon, and only featured the words "washing up liquid" in small letters. There were many complaints made by parents to company about how children will mistake the product for squash and drink it, this was a serious issue, it was even spoke of in the House of Lords. The company responded to these complaints by changing its packaging so it was more recognisable as washing up liquid.